This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone

208 pages

English language

Published Aug. 8, 2019 by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers.

ISBN:: 978-1-5344-3101-0

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. Signed, Blue.”

So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space.

Red belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common—save that they’re the best, and they’re alone.

Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning’s what you do in war. Isn’t it?

A …

In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked “Burn before reading. Signed, Blue.”

So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space.

Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game, one both Red and Blue are determined to win. Because winning’s what you do in war. Isn’t it?

A tour de force collaboration from two powerhouse writers that spans the whole of time and space.

5 editions

Marina reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

A piece of art

5 stars

If you like books where you don't get all the answers, that aren't necessarily linear, and are more about prose and gut-wrenching heartache, you'll enjoy this book. It's art. If you don't like artsy books, you probably should pick something else to read.

I loved it.

📚torstein📚 reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

Either too short, or too long.

No rating

I can't decide if this would have worked better (for me) as a short story, or a full length book. If it was longer, it could have expanded on it's ideas. If it had been shorter, it wouldn't have felt so repetetive.

There is some good ideas here, but they deserve better than being hand waved away. How do Red and Blue target their letters to each other across strands of time? If there are certain contested junctures in time, shouldn't they be swarmed with agents, and multiple aspects of the same agents? If the protagonists are just cogs in two massive opposing machines battling for supremacy over all time - why does it seems like they are the only two operators in the field?

I'm not saying this is a bad book, there is a lot good writing here. But it didn't work for me. Two highly …

I'm not saying this is a bad book, there is a lot good writing here. But it didn't work for me. Two highly subjective stars. (I'm going to hold of actually rating as there are so few reviews here yet)

Nix Kelley (they/them) reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

The beautiful violence of love

5 stars

I could not stop listening. This book is SO good. Intricate and lovely. Prose this delicious is rarely written.

Hirvox reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

A meeting of minds

4 stars

How do you have a love story between two beings separated by war, time and dimensions? With covert letters. They may be written in seeds or lava flows, but letters nevertheless.

penwing reads (they/them) reviewed This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

Wonderful, my Blue and Red

5 stars

I love this book so much. Just gorgeous in execution, and a story delightful in its telling.

Merovius reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

Review of 'This Is How You Lose the Time War' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Hauntingly beautiful. A love-letter to the written word.

bookafnd reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

probably not for everyone, but it's very good

5 stars

it's a magical realist (?) romance in a science fiction Time War setting, an unusual choice, but one that works well, given how strange the consequences of warping causality would be. If you can get ahold of the audio book, it's pretty good, has different readers for Blue and Red.

Subjects

Fiction, science fiction, general